Educators should base their assessment of students learning not on students grasp of facts but on the ability to explain the ideas trends and concepts that those facts illustrate

Education is a holistic process of facilitating knowledge, learning, beliefs, skills and values. Educators have the responsibility to not only facilitate this process but also to design appropriate pedagogical assessment to ensure its effectiveness. The statement contends that educators must base this assessment on students’ ability to explain concepts, ideas and trends underlying a fact rather than the grasp of the fact itself. While young children may not be intellectually advanced to comprehend all concepts, trends and ideas; for students of advanced age the recommendation is highly beneficial.

The Bloom’s pyramid for learning objectives starts with remembering facts and then progresses to its apex ‘creativity’. A pedagogy that evaluates students merely on the basis of their ability to remember some vivid information amounts to restrict their learning to the bottom of this pyramid and thus impeding creativity. When students know that they will be only assessed based on their memorization abilities; rote learning is encouraged. Given the importance of grades for higher education or for employment, this method will discourage them to spend their limited time in exploring, discovering and analyzing the information they have grasped despite their interest if any.

On the other hand, a system which aims to grade students based on their ability to comprehend and explain ideas, trends and concepts will motivate concept based learning. For example, students will not read history to merely remember ‘what, where and when’ type of information about the events but rather to understand why the events took place therefore taking lessons from past mistakes and fulfilling the very purpose of studying History. This will hold true for other subjects as well. Such a scenario stands to benefit the institution as well as the country.

Another argument to support the statement, and hence opposing the evaluation of students based on their fact learning ability, deals with their competency for job market. Students lacking skills in comprehending ideas, trends and concepts behind given facts will have compromised employability. For example, a meteorologist who is unable to predict trends in weather from given data will not be welcomed. Moreover, when students’ focus is limited to memorizing facts, they will fail to develop skill of knowledge application for different questions. For instance, that the earth revolves around the Sun is a fact and the gravity is the underlying idea. When students merely learn about the former, they won’t be able to explain whether other planets revolve around the Sun. The answer could have been deduced had they known about gravitational force.

People may argue that assessment based on fact-learning provides an objective and easier method for student evaluation. Yet, ease of this assessment methodology cannot compensate for the fact that it undermines the very objectives of education. Furthermore, some may argue that for many subjects, especially humanities, learning facts is as important as trends or ideas. However, one must note that ideas, trends and concepts are only derived from facts and can only be understood if associated facts are grasped. Admittedly, young children lack intellectual maturity to fathom all the ideas, trends and concepts surrounding a given fact. Therefore, in that case, it is wiser to asses them on their fact retaining ability but, yet, this should not be paramount in their pedagogy.

In conclusion, the proposition to evaluate students on their ability to grasp ad explain concepts, ideas and trends would foster creativity, knowledge application skills, curiosity and employability. However, the recommendation may not be practical for younger children given their diminished intellectual faculty and they, therefore, must be assessed otherwise. Yet, mere memorization of facts should not be of profound importance in their learning methodology.